Hyrule Warriors Game Review by Karune Walker

Oh, how I love The Legend of Zelda. The exploration. The boss fights. The intense story. Well you don’t get that in the latest instalment of the franchise, Hyrule Warriors, a mixture of both the Zelda and Dynasty Warriors series. Now many thought that this would be a terrible idea, mixing Zelda with Warriors and we would just get a game that was all Warrior, which would just be hacking and slashing, and neglect the part of it that was Zelda. Thankfully, this is not the case and what we got is an entertaining game in that what I believe, does not fall directly into either franchise.

Gameplay

The aim of Hyrule Warriors is to mindlessly mow down enemy soldiers and captains as one of twelve playable characters, ranging from the Legendary Hero Link, to the Demon and somewhat creepy Girahim (who is awesome), until you have completed a specific objective, mission, etc. Yes, this is core Warrior game mechanics and yes I said that this was different and it is. For one, at the end of a majority of missions, you have to take on bosses, namely those well-known within the Zelda universe, such as Ghoma, or find hidden secrets scattered around the map, such as finding all the heart pieces for every playable character to max out their health gauge or the hidden skulltula’s.

At times I will admit this may get a little repetitive, especially in the Legend mode, which is like a story mode. However what we also got was Adventure mode to spice things up as it allows you to complete specific challenges that upon completion with the highest rank will enable you to unlock hearts, weapons and even characters. Best part. It’s based off the original Legend of Zelda map! That’s not to say the story in Legend mode is bad, it was a strong story but I found it began to drag itself on towards the end and could have been around three to four levels shorter, but prior to that, the story was very interesting to follow.

Furthermore, if you happen to have your gaming buddy over, you can both play cooperatively, with one player using the TV screen and the other the Wii U gamepad. Unfortunately the frame rate of the game takes a hit. A big one at that as I found my game lagging quite a number of times when playing with a friend. On a side note, Hyrule Warriors does not have online co-op which for some reason angers a lot of people. Yes it would have been great to play online, but I believe it doesn’t take anything away from the game at all.

Visuals and Sound

When it comes to games, I hardly pay attention to visuals most of the time as it is gameplay that I enjoy most, but in saying that, the better the graphics, the bonus for me. While Hyrule Warriors is not a killer in the visual department, it still looks quite nice. The designs for the various levels and characters are quite good with the colour scheme also catching on the eye.

The sound in Hyrule Warriors, specifically the soundtrack, was a joy to listen to. Many famous Zelda tracks were taken and remixed to a more rock version of themselves. I know this may not work with everyone, it worked well for me and made the experience of the game all the more sweeter. I just hate the sounds the female characters make when attacking non-stop. Just sounds so weird. And yes, Link still yells “HYAAAA”. Apart from this, there is no voice acting, with Nintendo opting to just go with text boxes. Again. Even though they decide to animate the character’s mouths talking because reading text is much more effective than voices…

The Verdict

While Hyrule Warriors is not your classic Zelda game, it mixes well with the style of Destiny Warrior games to create an action packed adventure with many secrets to unlock. That being said, the story was too long for its own good, frame rate drops during co-op was frustrating, some sound effects were just disturbing and non-talking characters while their mouths moved was just annoying. Anyway, Hyrule Warriors is still enjoyable and should be picked up by anyone who own a Wii U, but I would not recommend getting a Wii U just for this.